Business Blogging 101

I’m surprised by how many businesses don’t blog. It’s one of the easiest, cheapest, and fastest ways to increase business…both online and offline. That’s why I’ve assembled this Business Blogging 101 guide.

To show what a difference blogging makes, I’m going to use myself as an example: I took a break from blogging for 6 months.

It was a mistake.

As soon as I started blogging again, I received 10 times more traffic. And my leads from my website jumped as well.

10x increase in visitors since I started blogging again

So, I wrote this Business Blogging 101 guide to help more businesses learn the importance of blogging and how to start.

In this article, I’ll teach you three things:

Explain the importance of blogging

Show you how to get started blogging

Give you tips to get the most business from your blogging

Feel free to skip over sections that don’t apply to you (for instance, if you already have a blog, you don’t need to read the section on how to create one).

Let’s start out with why you should blog.

Why You Should Blog

I’ve already shown you how blogging helped me.

But let me show you three important reasons you should blog:

1. Warm Leads

When a potential customer visits your website, 9 times out of 10, they aren’t ready to buy yet.

They are in research mode: either learning more about the general product or service you offer, or comparing yours to other brands.

Or they may simply have questions.

A blog can help here.

It’s as simple as writing blog posts that answer the frequently asked questions, or offer information, demonstrations, or specifications potential customers would be looking for.

Not only does this alleviate some of the burden on your sales people, but it speeds up the buying cycle: instead of a potential customer having to email or call to find an answer, they can find it immediately in a blog post on your website.

2. Search Engine Optimization (aka, increased ranking)

Consistent blogging is a guaranteed way to increase your search engine rankings (which, in turn, increases traffic to your website).

Google has stated time and time again, that it prefers websites with consistent, fresh, informative content.

In other words: it likes websites with blogs.

Need proof?

The highest ranking pages for most keywords are blog pages.

Simple as that.

3. Make You/Your Business an Authority

Most people start their buying process by researching a product or service, not a brand.

For instance, when beginning the car buying process, the consumer will research different types of cars and read reviews and specifications.

Smart business owners realize this and blog about the information these potential customers are looking for.

Using the car example, a smart car dealership would blog about the different cars they carry.

What this does is turn your business into an authority in the mind of the consumer. And consumers prefer to purchase from an authority.

A business that does this extremely well is Amazon.

If someone is looking for a specific book, they Google it and see Amazon has a description, reviews and ratings. They read those reviews, and if they like what they see, they purchase from Amazon.

You can do the same with your own products and services.

Later in this article, I’ll give you some blog post ideas to accomplish this.

Creating Your Blog

We know a blog is important to your website.

Now, let me show you how to actually create your blog.

If you don’t have a WordPress website…

…you’ll need to create a WordPress website.

WordPress is the best blogging software out there.

(And, as my own wbesite’s name (myWPexpert.com) may have hinted, I think WordPress is one of the best things mankind has ever created…ever.)

So, when creating a WordPress blog, you have two options.

First, you can create a WordPress.com blog. While it’s faster and easier to create this type, it’s not optimal for businesses. Just 2 of many reasons not to use it: it puts ads on your website and requires you to have WordPress.com in the domain name (such as mywpexpert.wordpress.com).

Instead, you want a self hosted WordPress website.

I created a simple, free course to walk you through setting up your WordPress business blog.

If you have a WordPress website…

…it’s very easy to add a blog to it.

Most WordPress themes come with a blog page template built in.

Find the template option under Page Attributes

To access it, create a new page and change the page template to your blog template. Page template options are to the right of the visual editor, in the “Page Attributes” box (see the image to the right).

If you don’t see that, you have a second option. Go to Settings and click on Reading.

At the top, change the “Front Page Displays” option to “A Static Page”. Select a page as your home page and choose a page you’d like to be your blog page. Please note that this option will not allow you to use a special home page built by your theme.

If you have neither option available, you will need a WordPress developer to help you add a blog. I provide this service. Just send me an email: [email protected].

What You Should Blog About (Blog Topic Ideas)

So, your blog is now all set up.

It’s time to start blogging!

But what should you blog about?

Here are 3 sources of inspriation:

1. Your Customers

The BEST source of blogging inspriation is your customers.

You’re writing your blog posts for potential customers anyways, so you should find out what yoru current customers would want to read.

Find out what questions they had before buying your product or service, while buying it, and after buying it.

Write blog posts answering these questions.

The best business blogging I’ve seen is when businesses get creative.

For instance, a duct tape compnay created a blog showcasing ways their customers used duct tape. One example was a duct tape dress.

Not only is this fun, but it gives your customers a new way to use your product.

And if you think your business is too boring to write blog posts about, just remember: there’s nothing more boring than duct tape.

2. Keyword Research

What people search for online is another source of inspiration for blog posts.

Doing a little keyword research, we can discover what people are searching for.

About Brandon Yanofsky

Thanks for sharing this info! Very insightful and useful for all of us baby bloggers out there.This is a great article and provides excellent advice for online businesses. One high quality blog post is worth hundreds of low quality blog comments or articles so it is really worth going the extra mile to ensure your content is fresh and of the utmost quality. In addition, it is also important these days to build your online brand, you need your brand to be the authority and in order to do this takes a lot of patience, hard work and thinking outsdie the box.